“Harry, let me go! You are hurting me! I cannot answer you anything until you let me go. See the mark you have left upon my wrist! How can you be so brutal?”
“You are not going to put me off like that,” said Harry, firmly. “I know how you women will wriggle out of a subject you don’t like, if you can. I am sorry if I have hurt you: you know very well I did not mean to do that; but I will be answered. Now sit down and get quite quiet and calm. I won’t hurt you, whatever you say; but you must tell me the whole truth, because, if you tell me any lies, I shall find them out and be very angry about it.”
His manner had grown calmer the moment he saw the red mark his strong hand had made on his wife’s wrist, and felt how utterly powerless in his grasp the little creature was. He placed her gently in the very chair she had tried to induce him to take, and then stood before her, towering above her, and without turning his eyes again toward the chair in which she sat, gravely and doggedly waiting.
Annie felt cowed. For the first time in their lives, the husband stood in the position of the superior, and, as she sat guiltily there, understanding clearly for the first time that her husband had just right of complaint against her, and that, moreover, he was using that right with consideration and manliness, she gave a shy look upward, as if to see what change this inversion of their old attitudes toward each other had wrought in Harry’s handsome, careless, boyish face.
It was too dark for her to see very clearly what little of his profile was shown in that position; she could only see that he stood very still, that, if he felt impatience, he was keeping it under strong control, and she began to feel dimly that in the argument which was coming he would meet her for the first time upon equal terms. As she still sat, with her head raised, looking up anxiously at him, he turned and his eyes met hers.
“Are you ready now?” he asked, simply.
“Ready for what?” said she, impatiently.
“Ready to answer some questions I have to ask you.”
“Of course I can answer any questions you please; but I don’t see the necessity of all this fuss about the matter. Whatever you have to ask I could have answered a long time ago,” said Annie, indifferently. “But if you like to play inquisitor and give yourself the airs of a judge, why—it’s nothing to me!”
“Can we have the gas lighted?” asked Harry. “I can’t see your face.”